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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28079481">On Warmth in the Wastelands</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheChronic/pseuds/TheChronic'>TheChronic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Number 5 | The Boy Gets a Hug, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Number Five | The Boy has PTSD, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Reader-Insert, Self-Insert, Sleep Paralysis, dream within a dream</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:35:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>836</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28079481</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheChronic/pseuds/TheChronic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He knew the cold would be the thing that eventually killed him.</p><p>Ever had a dream within a dream? Five is lost in the Apocalypse again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Number Five | The Boy &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) &amp; Reader, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)/Original Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>On Warmth in the Wastelands</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The female character can be OC, reader insert or Vanya if you please because hey: mi casa, su casa.</p><p>With reference to dreaming within dreams and sleep paralysis. Five always needs a hug, whatever he's doing imo, because I'm soft like that.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He knew the cold would be the thing that eventually killed him. He lay bundled under every layer he had ever gathered, huddled tightly against a wall to minimise the biting wind - which managed to creep a million different ways into his shelter - and stop it whipping away molecules of precious, precious heat. Still, he knew for certain that he was slowly freezing to death. The winter had been longer and harder than usual. He had never known true cold until he came here – and now, it seemed, in this blistering, unending bastard of a winter, he would never know how it felt to be truly warm again. He couldn’t move, couldn’t muster enough energy to do more than lift a fingertip in the dark beneath the pile of rags he lay beneath, feel it disconnect from the frozen dust of the ground and then drop back. Good, he was still alive, he told himself. But something began to give inside him – his heart, maybe his spirit. He couldn’t tell. He curled into a ball in his mind as well, and waited in the howling silence for the morning.</p><p>He dreamed he heard a woman calling for him. Her voice was concerned and he dreamed he felt the warm touch of her skin against his, fingertips brushing along his shoulder. She was calling him to her gently. Hesitantly. He felt like he knew her and yet knew, even in dreaming, that there was no one else here. Perhaps she was Death, beckoning him.</p><p>He snapped awake as the wind wailed over the top of him and something in the murky depths of the storm crashed to the ground and shattered. He lost his sense of her almost immediately but the deep cold which sunk through his skin was eased a little by the memory of warmth, of another body. He felt, as his mind came back into his own body, like he ought to be shivering but he was past the point where he had the strength for it. So he lay numbly, half-dead and delirious. He felt like perhaps he should care more, and hoped that sleep would return.</p><p>He dreamed of the warmth he had known as a child – the ever-warmth of the basement kitchen where hot food was served straight into warm dishes, and cutlery came out of the dishwasher hot to the touch. Of boiling kettles and sizzling pans over blue gas flames. Ovens which released billowing steam when opened and sent richly scented clouds floating to the ceiling. The fire in his father’s library.  Of piling back into the house on a snowy winter’s day with his siblings, laughing and joking. Body heat under a woollen overcoat and a frozen nose which warmed slowly and pleasingly in the radiator filled house, hot water pumping through its pipe veins bringing life and warmth to living blood in living veins.</p><p>He woke, slowly this time, bubbling like air through water, breaking through the surface of his dreams and bursting in the unforgiving cold of reality, out of warmth so needed that his mind could focus on nothing else.</p><p>The wind howled, and the snow swirled around him. Despite his resolution, a decision he made every night to tough it out ‘til morning, fear gripped his mind and tears came. They froze on his face. He couldn’t move to wipe them off – he tried, but his hands wouldn’t move as he willed, couldn’t rise to his face. The feeling of being buried alive finally overwhelmed him and he tried to open his mouth to scream but nothing, nothing would come out. He struggled, but nothing would crack the frozen surface. He knew the cold would be the thing that eventually killed him...</p><p>His own name rang in his ears as she slapped his naked shoulder with force. He snapped to, eyes opening, blinking in the darkness. Not the deep darkness beneath the mound but the quiet, fuzzy light of a dark house. Sensation returned to his extremities. As he focused on the silhouettes in front of him – nightstand, curtain, the sharp corners of the picture frame on the wall - she ran her warm hand over the chilly skin of his bare and exposed shoulder. Warm. She was always warm. He turned over slowly onto his back and blinked at the outline of her face, hazy in the low light. Wide eyes stared back, whites visible.</p><p>“Are you awake?”</p><p>He nodded.</p><p>“You were crying in your sleep. You were... stuck. Stuck still in one position. I couldn’t wake you. I had to smack you to wake you up.”</p><p>He turned again, this time to face her, and pulled her to him. Slim arms encircled him and he buried his face in her chest, sucking in the rising heat of her skin to chase the chill from own body.</p><p>“I was dreaming.”</p><p>“Some dream.” She kissed the top of his head, inhaled the scent of his hair deeply and sighed. “A dream, or a memory?”</p><p>“Both.”</p>
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